Teachers are often taught that young children are incapable of logical thought. Prone to fantasy and unruffled by inconsistency, preschool children are frequently baffled by the first lessons of early schooling. Trained to gently resist the child's illogic, teachers sometimes create just the incomprehension and anxiety they mean to avoid. In Wally's Stories, Vivian Paley shows that none of this need be so.

Wally's Stories is itself a story: the story of the evolution of a kindergarten classroom in which Paley learned to stop fighting childish fantasy and instead make use of it to stimulate the very best brand of thinking her five-year-olds can muster. Stories also lie at the heart of her classroom: stories that are first told by one of the children, then transcribed by the teacher, and then acted out by the class in dramatic productions of their own design. Paley shows that in the course of creating their own dramatic world, five-year-olds are capable of thought and language far in advance of what they accomplish in traditional classroom exercises. The children's stories also become a vehicle that they can use to explain themselves to their teacher and to one another. Together, teacher and children develop an unusual environment, one that is logical and literate, based on rules of fairness, friendship, and fantasy.

Vivian Paley's book is as refreshing as her teaching method-a new kind of book about a new kind of classroom.

About the Author
Vivian Gussin Paley (1929-2019), a longtime classroom teacher at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, was a MacArthur Fellow and winner of the 1998 American Book Award for Lifetime Achievement.

Reviews
In a book exceptionally modest in manner and unusually substantial in matter, Mrs. Paley has given a vivid and credible picture of how five-year-olds think. An entertaining picture, too, and a strangely inspiriting one. -- D. J. Enright * Times Literary Supplement *
This remarkable book is delightful to read and rewarding to ponder. It is the kind of book a teacher quotes to friends, shares with colleagues, and uses as a source of working ideas and inspiration. -- Alice Seletsky * Elementary School Journal *
[These] are the reflections of an expert, sensitive, experienced 'kid-watcher,' who believes that the children's magical thinking provides a legitimate framework within which more adult-like thinking can develop... Wally's Stories does not simply 'instruct'; it also unfailingly delights. -- Judith Lindfors * Language Arts *
Paley's anecdotal record of a kindergarten class is a reflective examination of how five-year-olds think and of how one child's well-developed imagination can catalyze a class... She has fresh insights to offer from this particular arena as she reminds us that magic gives children power in a world where adults seem to have the answers. A trenchant informal analysis. * Kirkus Reviews *



Book Information
ISBN 9780674945937
Author Vivian Gussin Paley
Format Paperback
Page Count 232
Imprint Harvard University Press
Publisher Harvard University Press
Weight(grams) 263g